Honest Eds

An entertaining experience it was and somewhere to get you thinking about Information Architecture.

As soon as I entered the shop I felt lost, which I guess is their intention – get lost amongst all the bargains and buy. The sign up to the next level said something like ‘this way for more great bargains you lucky people!’ I was curious, so I went up to the next level. It worked well in this type of shop as you kind of knew what to expect and I was on holiday so browsing for the sake of it was not a problem. However, if my local supermarket adopted this approach I would definitely go somewhere else. In my local supermarket I like to know where to find things as I want to get it over and done with as quick as possible. I find it annoying when they change the order of things to get you to notice different things and so you buy more. This is the same for the web. Tell me the train times now, whereas I don’t mind clicking for the sake of it on my favourite comedy site. I guess the information architecture should suit the purpose of the site – not just follow conventions for the sake of following conventions.